The latest news directly from E-Business Suite Development

I'm still doggedly plowing through our article backlog following our two-month blogging hiatus. Almost done. Here's a long-outstanding response to a FAQ about new browsers.

As of today, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.6 are the latest Windows desktop clients certified for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12. We're working on our certifications of IE 9 and Firefox 4 right now. Those certifications are going well, but we are running them in parallel with our work on the next major E-Business Suite release, so it's taking some time to get through these.

As usual, Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates. You're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for updates, which I'll post as soon as soon as they're available.

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Hi Steven, as you may or may not know, Mozilla has moved to Rapid Releases. Firefox 5.0 will be officially released on June 21st and Firefox 6.0 will be released end of August. Firefox 4.0 will no longer be supported on June 21st and same with 5.0 once 6.0 is released and so on.
Everyone know about the Oracle Revenue Recognition rules, but how will Oracle address Firefox's rapid releases cycle? Thanks.

Glad you brought that up. We're aware of Mozilla's new release model. Not happy about it, but aware of it.
Our only possible response is to state that we'll certify new Firefox versions as quickly as possible. Certifying maintenance updates (e.g. 3.5 vs. 3.6) is a relatively small effort. Certifying major updates (e.g. Firefox 4 vs. 5) is a much bigger effort, since we assume that the rendering engine and other important architectural components are being updated.
I'll turn the question around to you: does your organization intend to deploy the major new Firefox 4, 5, and 6 releases as soon as they're available? If yes, why?
My questions to conference attendees about this seem to indicate that some companies are planning to go to Firefox 4, but have no plans to take Firefox 5 or 6 in the near future.
Regards,
Steven

Here is my explanation based on my understanding of Mozilla's new release cycle.
The reason why companies may want to go to Firefox 5,6,7 etc. is, Mozilla, with the new release cycle, won't fix security bugs for previous releases. With the current cycle, even after Firefox 4 is released, they still fix security issues in Firefox 3.6.x for, I think, 18 months or until the support is over. With the new release cycle, you won't get the security fix for the older versions once the new version is released. If we don't go to the newer version, we will be exposing our computers to security vulnerabilities, which is worse than trying the application with the new Firefox, even if Oracle has not updated it's support.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

I can't comment on Mozilla's patching policy. You may wish to contact Mozilla for guidance on that.
Is your organization intending to upgrade to Firefox 4, 5, and 6 as soon as they're released, regardless of those products' certifications with Oracle products?
Regards,
Steven

Hi again Steven,
As you can see, Firefox 4.0 is basically end of life already according to Mozilla.
http://blog.mozilla.com/meeting-notes/archives/570
"No plans to do a 4.0.2 currently
The next “point release” for Firefox 4 is Firefox 5"
Google is dropping support for older browsers and it's only a matter of time before Firefox 3.6 gets the axe also from Google.
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-modern-browsers.html
"As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely."
So we prefer to run a supported browser for security reasons but Firefox 5.0 might or might not be certified & supported by Oracle yet. So we're stuck with this dilemma and unsure what to do.

Hi, Arun,
If you depend upon Firefox, I can appreciate the dilemma that Mozilla's patching policy creates for you. I don't have any recommendations, since good advice must take into account your security requirements, your external security auditor's rules, and other exogenous regulatory factors (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley or PCI legislation). You should review this situation with your security auditors.
Unfortunately, the Oracle E-Business Suite Division has no influence on Mozilla's patching policy. You may wish to contact Mozilla directly with your concerns about their policies and release strategy.
Here in the Oracle E-Business Suite division, the only response we have is try try and keep up with Mozilla's releases and certify them as quickly as possible with EBS.
Regards,
Steven

There is a lot of misunderstanding around the new "train" release process for Firefox.
I believe there is no EOL on 3.6.x or 4.0.x versions as yet, but for Firefox 5 that will EOL when Firefox 6 comes out, Firefox 6 will EOL when Firefox 7 comes out, etc. Even though there is major version number changes between 4 and 5 it is actually more similar to going from 3.5 to 3.6. That probably doesn't help much for Firefox 5 and above, but hopefully offers some security around Firefox 4.
The one caveat to this is the standard Mozilla support policy has always been to support the previous version for up to 6 months after the release of the new version and there is only this proposed new one (or immediate EOL of previous version), it is not set in stone and could change once Firefox 5 or 6 is out.
Might be worth someone at Oracle talking to the relevant people at Mozilla and explain the issues around the new release "train"

We're in the final stages of our certification of IE 9 with the E-Business Suite. Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for updates, which I'll post as soon as soon as they're available.

Thank you for your info, i have 2more problems first, when we upgrade our OS in windows7 our metalinik is not working we are using IE 9 also the web adi is not working as well we are using excel 2010 64bit. Please help me and let me know if you have solutions to these problems. your reply is highly appreciated